Buffalo Fire's Press Freedom Series: How Native Radio Stations Can Strengthen Their Independence and Serve Their Communities
The second installment of Buffalo Fire's press freedom series looks at Native radio stations as community infrastructure, examining how they can build editorial independence, sustain themselves financially, and serve as information anchors for communities that mainstream media has long ignored or misrepresented. The piece pairs institutional analysis with specific examples of stations that have found ways to stay independent, and it connects to the broader question of what a healthy Native media ecosystem looks like in a moment when federal support for public media is under pressure. Buffalo Fire is doing some of the most careful thinking in Indigenous journalism right now, and this series is worth reading in full. For Patty, whose Tribal Youth Media work has always been premised on the idea that Native communities need to tell their own stories, the question of who controls the infrastructure for that storytelling is not academic.